Underplayed Gems

Asparagus (1979)

Asparagus poster
Directed by
Suzan Pitt
Genre
experimental film
Country
United States
Runtime
20 min
Rating
6.5 of 10 from 75 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

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How it feels

A hand-painted animated short follows a woman through a series of surreal, dreamlike episodes involving asparagus. She interacts with strange objects and environments in a nonlinear narrative that shifts between animation and puppet scenes.

surrealdreamlikeslow-pacedvisually denseabstractatmosphericquizzicalunsettling

What happens

Asparagus is a 1979 American experimental animated short film written and directed by Suzan Pitt. Featuring music composed by Richard Teitelbaum, the film was produced over the course of four years, while Pitt was in residence at Harvard University and in Berlin, Germany. The animated portions of the film were accomplished through the use of hand-painted cels; a physical model set and puppetry are also utilized. Asparagus premiered in January 1979 at the Whitney Museum in New York City, where it screened for two weeks. It was also shown alongside the 1977 feature film Eraserhead for nearly two years, during the latter's run of midnight screenings in New York and Los Angeles. Asparagus has been characterized as a surrealist work, and has been analyzed for its exploration of identity, gender, sexuality, and the human psyche through a feminist lens. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

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